1689.] SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY. 83 Lundy, who thought the place untenable, and counselled the townsmen to make conditions; "but the fierce Minister of the Gospel, being of the true Cromwellian or Cameronian stamp, inspired them with bolder resolutions." * James finally left Hamilton and the French generals to work their will upon the besieged, and upon the people who had not the shelter of the beleaguered city; and he went back to Dublin to meet a Parliament called for the 7th of May. We must finish this story of heroic bravery and more heroic fortitude, although the events which we shall thus attempt briefly to relate, will detain us from other events of importance for more than three months of this busy year of 1689. Lough Foyle, the inlet of the sea which flows between the counties of Derry and Donegal, extends from its narrow entrance at Magilligan Point for about sixteen miles, when it meets the river Foyle at Culmore. The river is navigable for ships of heavy burthen to Londonderry, built by the colonists on the left bank. This city, in 1689, was contained within the walls; and it rose by a gentle ascent from the base to the summit of a hill, on the highest point of which was its cathedral. The streets were regularly laid out, in lines running to four gates, from a square in the centre, in which the Townhouse and the Guard-house were placed. The gradual ascent of the city thus exposed it to the fire of an enemy. The small Bastions were insufficient for the defence of the Curtain against a vigorous assault; and there was no Moat nor Counterscarp. A ferry crossed the Foyle from the east gate; and the north gate opened upon a quay. On the east bank of the Foyle were woods and groves, with sites of villages destroyed by the marauding soldiery. On the west bank, close to the strand, was a large orchard, which became a place of ambush. At the entrance of the Foyle was the strong fort of Culmore, with a smaller fort on the opposite bank. About two miles below the city were two forts,-Charles Fort on the west bank; Grange Fort on the east.t Lundy, the treacherous or perhaps panic-stricken governor, had persuaded Cunningham, the colonel who commanded two English regiments sent to assist in the defence of the place, to put his troops on board ship and sail The indignation of the English parliament was extreme when these troops returned home. Lundy's intention to surrender being manifest, the citizens, under the advice of their reverend champion, and of a more regular soldier, superseded the governor, and he was glad to escape in disguise. The battle now commenced in earnest. The reverend George Walker and Major Baker were appointed governors during the siege. They mustered seven thousand and twenty soldiers, dividing them into regiments under eight colonels. In the town there were about thirty thousand souls; but they were reduced to a less burdensome number, by ten thousand accepting an offer of the besieging commander to restore them to their dwellings. were, according to Lundy's estimation, only provisions for ten days. The number of cannon possessed by the besieged was only twenty. With such resources a protracted defence of Londonderry might well appear impossible. On the 20th of April the city was invested, and the bombardment was begun. "Life of James II." vol. ii. p. 334. + Plan in Harris's "Life of William III." p. 193. There 84 SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY. [1689. A strong force was planted at Pennyburn Mill, to cut off the road from Culmore to the city, that fort then being in the hands of the Protestants. It was afterwards lost. On the 21st the garrison made a sortie, and routed this force with considerable slaughter. Maumont, one of the French generals, fell by a musket ball in this desperate sally. The bombardment went on, with demi-culverins and mortars. No impression was made during nine days upon the determination to hold out; and on the 29th king James retraced his steps to Dublin, in considerable ill humour. He gave vent to that petulance which had so often alienated his friends, by exclaiming, "If my army had been English, they would have brought me the town, stone by stone, by this time." The siege went on, amidst bombardments and sorties, for six weeks, with little change. Hamilton was the commander of James's forces, in consequence of the death of Maumont; and another French officer, Persignan, who might have assisted Hamilton's inexperience, was mortally wounded in a sortie of the sixth of May. The garrison of Londonderry and the inhabitants were gradually perishing from fatigue and insufficient food. But they bravely repelled an assault, in which four hundred of the assailants fell. Of the relief which had been promised from England there were no tidings. This solitary city had to bear, as it would appear, the whole brunt of the great contest for the fate of three kingdoms. Large bodies of troops held the country on every side, keeping in awe the trembling and starving population, that could give no succour. No friendly ship could sail up the river without receiving the fire from hostile forts at its mouth and on its banks. No messenger could safely pass by land or by water to tell of the need there was for relief. The banks of the Foyle were lined with musqueteers. The roads on the East and on the West were blocked by masses of troops. Across the narrow part of the river, from Charles Fort to Grange Fort, the enemy stretched a great boom of fir timber, joined by iron chains, and fastened on either shore by cables of a foot thick. On the 15th of June, the anxious lookers out from the high places of the city descried a fleet of thirty sail in the Lough. The English flag floated in the great æstuary, but the deliverers came no nigher for weeks. Signals were given and answered; but the ships lay at anchor, as if to drive hope to despair. Provisions were now dealt out in quantities scarcely sufficient to sustain life; and fever and dysentery seized upon their hundreds of victims. Gunpowder was still left; but the cannon balls were shot away, and the resolute men cast lead round brick bats, and fired the rough missiles upon the besiegers. At the end of June, Baker, one of the heroic governors, died. Hamilton had been superseded in his command by Rosen, when it was known in Dublin that an English fleet was in Lough Foyle. The prolonged resistance of two months by a city not fortified upon scientific principles, was too humiliating for the Frenchman, who was reported to have dragooned the Protestants of Languedoc; and Rosen, who was invested with powers as " Marshal General of all his majesty's forces," issued a savage proclamation, declaring that unless the place were surrendered by the first of July, he would collect all the Protestants from the neighbouring districts, and drive them under the walls of the city to starve with those within the walls. This was not a vain threat. For thirty miles round the remnant of the population-the old man incapable of bearing arms, and the young wife 1689.1 SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY. 85 with an infant at her breast-the children who lingered about their desolate homes, and the cripple who could fly nowhere for shelter-were driven in flocks towards the city where their friends were well nigh perishing. Some dropped on the road; some were mercifully knocked on the head. A famished troop came thus beneath the walls of Londonderry, where they lay starving for three days. The besieged immediately erected a gallows, within view of their enemies; and sent a message to their head-quarters that priests might come in to prepare the prisoners within the city for death, for they would hang every man if their friends were not immediately dismissed. The threat had its effect, and the famished crowd wended back their way to their solitary villages. It is but justice to James to state, that he expressed his displeasure at this proceeding, and wrote to Rosen, "It is positively our will, that you do not put your project in execution as far as it regards the men, women, and children, of whom you speak; but, on the contrary, that you send them back to their habitations without any injury to their persons." Meanwhile the siege went on. Batteries were brought closer and closer to the city; and the firing was continued by day and night. At last a communication was effected with the fleet in the Lough. Major-General Kirk, the evil instrument of cruelty in the expedition against Monmouth, was now in the confidence of the new government. He it was who had come to the assistance of the besieged with men, arms, and provisions. He sent word by a little boy, who carried a letter in his garter-or in his button—that he found it impossible to get up the river; that he expected six thousand more men from England; and that then he would attack the besiegers by land. A doubtful hope. Famine was now doing its terrible work. The well-known substitutes for ordinary food, of horse-flesh, and dog's-flesh, of rats, of hides, were fast failing. On the evening of the 30th of July, Walker preached in the Cathedral, exhorting his hearers still to persevere, for that God would at last deliver them from their difficulties. An hour after the sermon the lookers out descried a movement in the Lough. Three vessels are sailing to the mouth of the Foyle. There are two merchantmen and a frigate. They are fired upon by the Culmore Fort and the New Fort. They return the fire. They are in the river. They are within a mile of the boom. They heed not the shots of the musqueteers, nor the guns of the Charles Fort and Grange Fort. And now the foremost of the merchant vessels is known by her build. She is the Mountjoy of Derry. She dashes at the boom. She breaks it, but she is driven ashore by the rebound. They are boarding. No. The frigate comes up and fires a broadside. The Mountjoy rights again. The three ships pass the boom safely. They are coming to the quay. We are saved. That night the four thousand three hundred of the garrison who, out of seven thousand four hundred, were left alive, feasted upon something better than the nine lean horses and a pint of meal for each man, that were left. Of the abundance that was landed at the quay amidst the shouts of the brave defenders of Londonderry, there was enough to make every heart glad of that heroic population, who thus fought and who suffered for a great principle. Bonfires are lighted. Bells are rung. The fire of the besiegers is the next day continued. But at nightfall a smoke arises from their camp, as if from the huts which had given them shelter for three months. Another night of watchfulness for the besieged; and as the sun of 86 THE SIEGE RAISED. [1689. the first of August glimmers over the waters of Lough Foyle, it is seen that Rosen, with his half-disciplined soldiers and his Rapparees, had marched away on the road to Strabane. Eight thousand of the besiegers had perished in this memorable struggle.* At the period when Londonderry was saved, the men of Enniskillen took the field, and won the decisive battle of Newton Butler. On the 29th of July, the day before the great boom of the Foyle was broken, two English colonels, Wolseley and Berry, who had been sent by Kirk with a supply of arms and ammunition, sailed up Lough Erne to the isle of Enniskillen with their welcome cargo, and landed amidst the shouts of the people. Their arrival was very timely. A large force was advancing against Enniskillen under the command of Macarthy, Viscount Mountcashel. Wolseley and Berry went forth with three thousand men to meet the five thousand who were thus coming with a confidence of success; for the duke of Berwick was to attack Enniskillen from another quarter. The hostile forces were in presence of each other on the 30th. The larger number began to retreat; the smaller followed. Macarthy's dragoons at last turned to face the bold yeomanry, who were advancing with the determination of men whose dearest interests were at issue in this deadly strife. The Celtic army was routed amidst terrible butchery. As the besiegers of Londonderry halted on the 1st of August at Strabane, they heard the news of this defeat. They became wholly disorganised, abandoning their stores and their sick and wounded. James was already out of heart. The king's intelligence from England assured him of a speedy invasion from thence. The length of the siege of Derry, the badness of the weather, the frequent sallies, the unwholesomeness of the place of encampment, "had in a manner destroyed the army, so that no service could be expected from it for a considerable time." Add to this, "My lord Mountcashel entirely routed." Such were the griefs which, when Schomberg landed with an army on the 13th of August, "struck such a consternation amongst the generality, as made them give up all for lost." + We must revert to the close of the year 1688, to be able to present a rapid narrative of the course of the Revolution in Scotland. The attempt of James to dispense with the Test Act was as ill received in Scotland as in England. The Episcopalians suspected the motive; the moderate Presbyterians did not welcome his limited indulgence; the Cameronians spurned it, with a bitter hatred of their old oppressor, and of all his evil instruments. But there was in Scotland that strong feeling of attachment to their own race of kings which would not very enthusiastically welcome their sudden and complete downfall. There was sure to be a struggle, however it might terminate, for the superiority of the Church of the minority, established by law; and for the restoration of the Church of the majority, There are two original narratives of the siege of Londonderry, from which many of its incidents must be derived. One is, "A true account of the siege," by the famous George Walker, published in 1689. The other, published in 1690, is "A Narrative of the Siege," by John Mackenzie, a Dissenting Minister, who was chaplain to one of the regiments in the city. These accounts are condensed and compared in the "Life and Reign of William III." by Walter Harris. "Life of James II." vol. ii. p. 372. Original Memoirs. 1689.] THE REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND. 87 proscribed and persecuted. Conflicting interests and passions were certain to be brought into more immediate and direct hostility than in the English Revolution, in which an outrage upon the Church, with a view to the preponderance of Catholicism, united for a season the opposing principles of Establishment and of Dissent. In Scotland the government was wholly in the hands of those who had been the ministers of the intolerant tyranny of the king, and were the bitter enemies of those who clung to the Covenant. It was difficult to estimate what course events would take when the prince of Orange landed in England. Ths earl of Perth, the Chancellor, had declared himself a Roman Catholic on the accession of James. When the prince of Orange had landed, the Chancellor approached the Presbyterian ministers in Edinburgh with the statements of what king James had done for them, and how they ought to oppose the unnatural invasion of that good king's nephew. He was answered, that the favours of the king had only for their object to ruin the Protestant religion. James fled; and then the terrified Chancellor attempted to fly also; for, says he, " Blair came from Edinburgh, and told me that the king was gone into France, and that if I did not immediately get away I was a gone man. The earl and his lady went on board a sloop, where the men used them "with all the barbarity Turks could have done; and finally put them on shore "at the pier at Kirkcaldy, exposed to the mockery and hatred of the people." The mob of Edinburgh, on the 10th of December, had broken into the chapel of Holyrood House, which had been fitted up for the Roman Catholic service; had destroyed its decorations; and had committed the sacrilege of disturbing the graves of the old princes of Scotland. The rabble had been fired upon by captain Wallace, who was in command of a party of soldiers at the palace; and the people of Kirkcaldy, says the earl of Perth, " got into a tumult to have me immediately sent to Edinburgh; though the tide did not serve, and though they knew that at Edinburgh I should have been torn to pieces, for there they believed that Johnny Wallace was commanded by me to fire upon the people."+ rescued from the furious multitude of Kirkcaldy, "who began to call for cords; " and was conveyed to Stirling Castle, where he was detained as a prisoner for four years. Such was the temper of the people towards dignitaries at whose frown they had so lately trembled. The Episcopal Clergy fared no better. The hatred of the Scottish Puritans against the observance of Christmas went far beyond the quarrel with mince-pie of the Commonwealth Puritans. On the Christmas day of 1688, as if by universal agreement in the Western counties, the obnoxious ministers were, in the phrase of the day, "rabbled." Armed bodies of Covenanters terrified each clergyman in his manse; destroyed his furniture; gave him notice to quit; or turned him and his family out of their houses. They burnt his Prayer Book, and they locked up his church. No lives were lost, and no wounds were inflicted, in these execrable outrages. He was In such a temper of a long oppressed people, William had issued his letters, as in England, for the assembly of a Convention. In England the strictest regard was paid to the existing state of the representation. In Scotland, the Act of 1681, which compelled every elector to renounce the *"Letters from James, Earl of Perth," 1845, p. 1. + Ibid. p. 5. |